Seiler: What's a coalition good for?

CASEY SEILER

Updated 7:07 pm, Saturday, June 8, 2013

Just after the state Senate's Majority Coalition was formed in December, I used this space to compare the alliance of the Independent Democratic Conference and the chamber's Republicans to the 1972 film "The Thing With Two Heads."

After six months, this comparison has turned out to be only partly effective.

For one thing, "The Thing With Two Heads" had a prominent role for an African-American: former New York Giants defensive tackle and sometime actor Rosey Grier. The Majority Coalition, in contrast, is as white as Martha Stewart's house on washday following the unceremonious booting of Sen. Malcolm Smith from the IDC's ranks following his indictment on corruption charges.

Also, Grier and his co-star Ray Milland spent much of "The Thing With Two Heads" squabbling, while the IDC-GOP marriage has until now been remarkably tranquil.

While I'm not ready to say that the honeymoon is over, the next two weeks will see their relationship tested in a way only hinted at during the closing days of this year's state budget process. In March, tensions arose over the pace and size of a minimum-wage increase that the runaway Democrats had assured their progressive colleagues would be included in the fiscal package.

Many of the same progressives are back at the IDC's door demanding full Senate consideration of a campaign reform package that includes public financing of elections, and they've been joined by environmentalists seeking a two-year ban on hydrofracking and — of greatest immediate concern to the Majority Coalition — women's groups seeking passage of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's 10-point Women's Equality Act.

Republican Leader Dean Skelos, who I suppose would play the Milland role in this analogy, has said that he'll stand fast against all three of those items. And he and Klein need to agree before any bill can come to the floor.

And if you believe in this relationship, that's as it should be. A coalition, after all, is all about power-sharing. But there's a very good possibility that after the end of the current session, it could also feature a heaping helping of blame-shifting.

If the Women's Equality Act fails to get a Senate vote, the vectors of finger-pointing will resemble one of those four-man parallelogram Mexican standoffs in a John Woo film:

• Women's groups and mainline Democrats will blame the GOP but save the larger portion of their rage for the IDC, claiming that the rebel Dems swapped a floor vote for continued Republican-approved power.

• The IDC will blame the mainline Democrats for failing to get all of their members — including definite no-voter Ruben Diaz Sr. and possible no vote Tim Kennedy — in line to get to the magic vote tally of 32. All four members of the IDC would vote for the bill.

• The Republicans will blame Cuomo, the women's groups and the Senate Democrats for refusing to lop off the abortion plank in order to pass the other nine less controversial sections of the bill, and claim that valuable economic justice and domestic violence measures were sacrificed in order to preserve a political cudgel for Democrats to wield.

Cuomo has suggested that he's prepared to blame almost everyone if the bill fails — which is, of course, the same as blaming no one at all. For now, the governor says he and the large coalition of like-minded women's groups insist on keeping all 10 of the bill's sections in place. That's solidarity, but it would also give him a chance to do a little surreptitious pointing at his allies if nothing happens: They said all or nothing — who was I to refuse them?

All of this is happening as the session rushes to an end, and Cuomo hopes to see action on a number of sensitive issues, including a casino siting blueprint and his Tax-Free NY proposal for state university campuses and associated sites.

Republicans are already touchy about those two plans: Like most lawmakers, they think they should have a bigger role in picking where casinos might go, and Skelos has said he wants the Tax-Free NY plan to be part of a comprehensive fiscal package.

This set of circumstances is highly reminiscent of March 2012, when Cuomo abandoned his idealistic and largely uncompromising plan to reform the redistricting process and settled for a compromise measure, and a passel of other bills he wanted to pass. It was the most hatchet-faced Big Ugly in years.

He has said many times that government is not a debating society, and that the achievement of meaningful legislation is the goal of the session. And that's true.

But if women's groups walk away feeling as if the reproductive rights plank, or perhaps the larger equality bill, was shopped off for progress on casinos and economic development, they might not think of him fondly when next the Legislature arrives in town for session, in the election year 2014.